13th monster-wave ETA 6:21:09:44

Please take shelter in the nearest city =>

Greeted by this message and a pounding headache, Victoria wakes up. She looks around as her vision slowly comes into focus.

"Finally awake, sleepyhead?", she hears Daniel's voice somewhere from her left.

"Urgh! Give me a sec.", she groans as she tries to wrangle her headache while simultaneously trying to understand her situation.

The last thing she could remember clearly was that strange blue box, just like the one that was currently floating around in her consciousness. Everything after that was pretty blurry, and now, they were suddenly in a forest.

A fucking huge forest if she might add. The trees around her were larger than they had any right to be, approaching heights similar to redwoods, just that these were white, like severely oversized birches.

"Right, the headache. It's already been three hours since we came here."

Victoria looked in his direction, immediately noticing that something was different about him. But she just couldn't put her finger on what it was.

That changed immediately after Daniel offered her a hand and pulled her to her feet.

Victoria had always been tall for a girl, her height of 180cm making her taller than most boys even. But now that she stood in front of Daniel, he was suddenly taller than her. Well, she always knew that he was actually taller than her, but he was always slouching, which shaved off at least ten centimeters.

Also, he acted strangely confident and while he tried to act normal, his eyes had a severe look to them. Whatever had happened to him wasn't something that could happen in three hours.

Had he lied to her and come with an earlier wave? Whatever that means? She quickly thought back on what happened. It was still a bit blurry, but she was pretty sure he told her his wavenumber first. There was no way he could have known what her number was going to be.

Also, he still looked exactly the same. The only thing that changed was his behavior. He wore the same clothes and had no sudden changes in his physique. Hell, he even still had the same ink smudges on his right hand from when his ballpen broke during class.

"Sooo... Do you have any idea what's going on?", Victoria finally asks, her headache already almost completely gone.

"Try saying: status, public."

"Status, public."

Suddenly, another blue window appeared. But different from the one that was floating around in the back of her mind, this one was floating in the air in front of her face.

Name: Victoria Bright

Waves: Lv. 0 (0/1)

Class: Wife T1

Level: 0 (0/1 exp)

Stats:

Endurance: 10 + 0 + 0

Strength: 10 + 0 + 0

Concentration: 10 + 0 + 0

Willpower: 10 + 0 + 0

Magic: 10 + 0 + 0

Magic power: 10 + 0 + 0

Talent: Learning Lv. 1 (0/55 exp)

Skills: N/A

"Hmm... As I thought, I have to protect her...", Daniel mumbled.

Only now did Victoria notice that he was looking over her shoulder, but she couldn't quite believe what he was saying. Again, it was completely out of character for him.

"So, it seems like you were right about the..."

"Aaaahhhh! Help! Help me! Someone... The wolves!"

Suddenly, they hear a scream. And only a few seconds later a small boy, maybe eight, at most ten years old stumbles out from behind one of the trees.

"Where the hell... Wait here and don't move.", Daniel says.

He crouches down and picks up a stone. With a small brown shimmer, the stone suddenly starts expanding. First forming a simple rod, before growing in width and length until he held an impractically large, twohanded sword in his hand. Seriously, the blade alone was already about two meters long which would make certain techniques impossible, but the blade was also at least twenty centimeters wide and, if she saw correctly, about two and a half centimeters thick.

That thing wasn't a sword. It was a stone-slab he had no right to be able to even lift. Hell, if that thing was made from stone just like it looked to be, the handle should have broken off before it even reached half that length.

As the blade finished forming, a group of three wolves, just as oversized as everything else, jumped out from behind the same tree the boy had come from.

When Victoria notices the [Dire Wolf] sign above their heads, Daniels heavy blade swings already around, its sheer weight preventing it from ever slowing down as it disintegrates its way through the wolf's skull, drawing arcs of blood in the air.

While the first wolf's body is flung away by the force of the strike, Daniels blade continues its circular path through the air.

Noticing that he is about to miss the second wolf, he turns the flat side of his blade forward with a flick of his wrists, momentarily creating a gale strong enough to turn the offending beast into a smudge of red on the nearest tree.

Seeing that, the last wolf tries to run away. But before it can take more than three steps, Daniels blade completes its circle, coming around for another swing.

Seeing that the last wolf was even further away than the second, Victoria expects to see another iteration of "wolf on tree".

Daniel, however, lets out a grunt, shifting the blade's path above his head before plunging the blade tip first into the ground. At the same time, an identical copy of the blade shoots out of the ground from beneath the wolf, skewering it through the stomach before proceeding to cut the creature's hind legs apart right in between, as the wolf's weight continues to carry it forward.

As Daniel takes his hands off the blade, its glow disappears and moments later the blade crumbles apart and dissipates.

"What. The. Hell. Was. That?", Victoria asks, flabbergasted.

"Demons. Monsters if you want to be specific. Don't worry, their bodies will disappear after a while."

"Good to know, but that is not the problem right now."

Daniel sheepishly scratches the back of his head.

Victoria looks behind her where she finds the boy hiding behind her back.

"Urgh, right... How about you wait over there while I take a look around and make sure there aren't any more demons in the area?", he says while pointing at a little grove protected by a tree and two roots on three sides where they wouldn't be able to see the corpses or what's left of them.

"You sure?", Victoria asks while pushing the child in that direction already.

"Yep. Don't worry, I can take care of myself.", Daniel reassures her, disappearing behind a tree moments later.

As Victoria climbs over one of the gigantic roots that would be her new hideout, for the time being, she notices that not only were they protected on three sides by the tree, but there was even a stone wall and roof, glowing in a soft brown.

This was definitely something Daniel had made, but she had absolutely no idea when.

She pushes the small child into the little house and follows directly after him, finding the room surprisingly spacious. She quickly swiped away some of the leaves lying around on the ground, before she sat down and started to inspect the soles of her feet.

While all this happened, she was still wearing the same oversized T-shirt and shorts, completely without shoes. And walking around in a forest barefoot, seriously hurt if you weren't used to it. Now that she thought about it, the same went for Daniel, but he didn't even make a face while running around. Though, that definitely wasn't the strangest or most surprising thing she had seen him do in the last couple minutes.

"Soooo,", she turns towards the boy: "Who are you and what do you want?"

"W-what do you mean?", the little boy stutters, tears in his eyes.

"Drop the act. Why bother with it now while you didn't make a single reaction while Daniel brutally slaughtered those animals?"

"Maybe... I was in shock?", he more asks than he actually answers.

"Yeah right. And you didn't just appear out of thin air from behind a tree either.", Victoria replies sarcastically.

"Hmm. As I thought, you were the right choice."

As he says that, his shadow suddenly starts bubbling, slowly expelling black, tar-like gunk that quickly crawled and expanded over every surface, including walls and ceiling while closing up the entrance.

Once the entire room was covered, a small glowing ball appeared between the two people, shining a light back into the darkness. Then, the tar-like substance starts to turn darker and darker, and Victoria's body begins to feel lighter until she feels like she is floating in space.

While all of this happens, Victoria's hands and feet, and even her mouth are covered in the black gunk, preventing her from taking any actions.

"Please excuse me, but it's time for some random exposition. We don't have much time until that little puppet you call your friend returns, so I can't have you interrupt me at every turn. By the way, you call me Homy.", the boy starts his explanation.

All the while, Victoria frantically tries to struggle free and then gives him the most judging look she possibly could when she hears the utterly stupid name he calls himself by. Finally, she settles on furiously glaring at him, since that the only thing she can do, but decides to listen nonetheless. It was fairly clear at this point that the boy could do with her whatever he wanted.

"*Ahem* Once upon a time, in a galaxy far, far away..."

Victoria rolls her eyes at the child's antics, wondering why he was wasting time, right after explaining that they shouldn't do exactly that.

"Sorry, wrong story. Okay. Once upon a time, there was a god of creation. First, he created the Universe. Then the first Sun, and the first planet. Next, well, he created pretty much everything else.

Then, he got lonely, so he created other gods. But since he was a cowardly little motherfucker, he made it so that they could never harm or disobey him.

But, then it happened. You, humans, have that wonderful thing called Murphy's law. Everything that can go wrong, will go wrong. And well, he may not have known that that was even possible, but something went wrong. When he created me, he couldn't control me like all the others for some reason.

And, well. Here I am now, the god of humans."

Finally realizing where that gruesome name came from, Victoria looks at the self-proclaimed god judgingly again.

"Hey, don't look at me like that. Calling myself Homo might have been more accurate, but I really don't want to call myself that. Not like I have something against gay people. They are humans too and thus part of my dominion, but I don't want to call myself Homo, Ok!?"

Victoria goes back to her angry glare.

"Very well, where was I? Right, I was created. Obviously, I didn't like how that guy was going about business, so I created you, Humans. And while I created you weak, so that they would only notice once it was too late, I gave you the potential to rival, and even kill gods.

Well, things didn't quite turn out as planned, since I forgot you guys are selfish little shits.

I got sealed, and the god of creation crippled humanity. He took away your magic, restricted your minds to the inside of your skulls, and made your bodies grow weak with age.

Fast-forward a very long time, and here we are. I managed to escape my seal and promptly made to give humanity back its powers, which resulted in a bit of a tug-o-war between me and Creation, which then resulted in the creation of this system whose only purpose is to give humans the chance to grow insanely powerful. The only downside is, you guys have to dodge all the literal and metaphorical stones the rest of the gods are throwing at you so that you don't die in the process.

And let me be honest, it was a little unfair. It was me against everyone else, and there are gods for every shit you can imagine. Including the god of Shit himself, the god of systems, and yes, there is also a god of Homos, just so you know.

Anyway. Just because the system has been balanced, that doesn't mean Creation is quite finished with you yet. Because even now, is he choosing his heroes. Or to be more precise, he is taking your most talented individuals and stunts their growth.

How he is doing that? Well, the strength of the demons is based on the average strength of all humans and the number of individuals with the highest tier.

If you know that, it's just a matter of finding the right balance. And by arbitrarily giving them a tier five class, without them going through the process of leveling through tier one to four, as well as giving them a number of skills whose strength completely depends on how strong their patron god wants them to be, last but not least, he has them train in a pocket dimension with accelerated time, and e voila they are forever stuck in tier five. Of course, it's not a hard cap, but who wants to grind for two months minimum for a single level? And if the hero gets stronger than they thought he would, well they just make the skills weaker they granted him.

What I want to do is, almost the same, just that I want you to become the biggest motherfucker of... Oh, come on! Did he have to come back when I'm almost finished? Anyway, I want to sponsor you, think about it!"